ITT I post every word I don't know from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > ITT I post every word I don't know from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

cant cook creole bream posted:

This, I am reasonably sure, is just a tripod on two legs, which seems structurally unsound.

It's used to support something like a rifle or a spotting scope, where your body is providing the extra support that would normally be provided by the third leg.
Something like this:

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Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Doc Fission posted:

affray

It's a fight with multiple people, usually in public. A bar fight would be an affray.

Doc Fission posted:

shellalegh

If the guy meant to say shillelagh, it's a wooden club, but a naturalish one. Think a knotty tree branch that's been turned into a club, instead of a carved wooden nightstick.

It's either a small sliding scale kind of thing used for fine measurements(think vernier calipers) or an add-on device for fine-turning the output of a larger one(think vernier throttles on airplanes)

Doc Fission posted:

hackamore

It's a way to control a horse without putting a bit in its mouth. Sort of like a leather/rope harness that wraps around the horse's head and lets you maneuver it with the reins.

Doc Fission posted:

wainscotted

Wainscoting is those wooden panels that cover the bottom half of walls. So a room with wainscoting has been wainscoted.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 01:58

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

cant cook creole bream posted:

I'm not ashamed to say that I knew none of those and wont remember them either. Why does the English language need a word for a naturally grown club? Also I have no idea how that would be pronounced. Is that Gaelic?

It's Gaelic, yes. Pronounced something like "shi LAY lee". As a note, a proper one is smoothed and shaped and polished and such, but they still definitely look like they came off of a tree. Here's a wikipedia picture of some in construction.

TBH I learned this word because it was the name of a Druid spell to summon a magical club in the computer game Baldur's Gate, and I pronounced it as something like "Shilly-AUGH" for an embarrassingly long time.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 06:30

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

cant cook creole bream posted:

Yeah, I got nothing. Most of those seem like typos of semicommon words. I'm gonna assume tha the author just didn't know that the proper term is fusillo. Now the real question is, why does the story resolve around a singular noodle.

Is chary maybe the word stem of charity? My browser doesn't even accept it as a word. Could be a name, I guess.

Are all of those English words, or is this some fantasy setting, where a quirt is the name for some fire-breathing nightingale?

Fusil is a French word meaning a musket.

Chary is cautious or wary. If you've been bitten by a dog, you might be chary of them in the future.

A quirt is a short whip, the kind of thing you'd see cowboys using to drive cattle.

A lintel is a heavy horizontal beam over two vertical supports. The top horizontal stones in Stonehenge are the lintel stones, as an example. Most commonly you'll hear about this in reference to a beam over a fireplace, or in post-and-lintel construction.

Here's an example of modern post-and-lintel construction.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2021 22:55

Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Doc Fission posted:

scurf

It's flakes/flaking on your skin, most often used to describe dandruff. Used in another context it can mean describing almost anything with a similarly flaky surface.

Doc Fission posted:

baldric

It's a belt that hangs from one shoulder down to the opposite hip, used for carrying a sword or a gun or something similar.

Doc Fission posted:

vinegarroons

It's a kind of scorpion-esque arachnid that sprays loving vinegar(well, acetic acid, which is the acid in vinegar) at things as a self-defense mechanism. I loved weird bugs as a kid and this one has always stuck out in my memory because it sounds like the worst loving macaroon flavor in the world, but it's actually a bug whose main defense tactic is a spraying loving vinegar everywhere.

Doc Fission posted:

centroids

It's a math term for what's roughly the center of gravity of a shape. A good way to think of it is that if you cut a two-dimensional shape out of a piece of cardboard, the centroid is the point where you could balance that cutout on a fingertip.

Doc Fission posted:

lemniscate

It's a curve shaped like a figure-eight. The sideways '8' infinity symbol is a good example.

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Khizan: Jul 30, 2013

Dunnage is basically packing peanuts for ship cargo. Cheap materials or whatnot that's used to pack more valuable items securely so they don't shift in the hold. Alternatively, it can be used to refer to miscellaneous luggage and low value cargo used to fill up a ship's capacity to avoid running partially empty.

Doc Fission posted:

archimandrite

It's a religious figure to do with monasteries. I want to say it's something like... abbots are in charge of a single monastery and they're under an archimandrite who oversees multiple monasteries? Unsure of the specifics.

Doc Fission posted:

priapic

Penis-like or penis-shaped or generally dong-related.

Doc Fission posted:

revetment

They're those sloping bits you see near retaining walls at the beach and such. They deflect and absorb the impact of water to protect the actual retaining wall.

If you're talking about it in a military fortification context, I think it's basically dirt or sandbags or whathave you that's piled up against a wall to help reinforce it from cannon fire and such, but I'm not sure.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2021 04:33

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > ITT I post every word I don't know from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian